


Beautiful Boy

by jiemba



Series: Sanvers Week 2017 [5]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, Domestic, F/F, Family, Gay Parents, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-11-18 20:39:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11298420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jiemba/pseuds/jiemba
Summary: Alex and Maggie try desperately to cope once they learn that their unborn child needs surgery and may not survive.





	Beautiful Boy

**Author's Note:**

> Sanvers week day 5 prompt - domestic
> 
> Tw: hospitals/illness, some mentions of homophobia and police brutality

The first time Maggie felt him move, she’d woken Alex so frantically she thought someone had died.   
  
But when her wife took her hands and pressed them to her belly, beaming and insistent (“There, right there, do you feel it?”), Alex could only shake her head.   
  
That was always her greatest fear, in the beginning. That he wouldn’t feel like hers right away. That he’d never feel like hers at all.    
  
She remembered the pain of having Kara stand before her dressed in black, snarling that they didn’t share blood, and imagined her son spitting the same thing at her, mid-argument, in fifteen years.   
  
It had been drilled into her from day one, every time someone would congratulate Maggie but not her, or a stranger would ask how far along her friend was. Every time Eliza would make a shotgun subtle suggestion about ensuring that he had enough male influences in his life. When she would try to visit Maggie during her check-ups and the nurse would ask her, cautiously, if she was a family member. When she would do 3am runs to the grocery store for ginger beer and the cashier would ask how far along she was, only to say “Oh I’m sorry, I just assumed you were the mom”.   
  
Now, she couldn’t be more grateful for that distance. It was the only thing keeping her from screaming.   
  
She clenched Maggie’s hand on the way out of the doctor’s office, feeling the tremble of her wife’s skin, stopping to take her ashen face in her hands. “It’s gonna be fine,” she found herself saying, only because that’s what you said at times like this, even when the words were hollow in your throat. “We’ll figure this out.”  
  
Still in shock, Maggie could only shake her head, glazed eyes drifting somewhere over Alex’s chest, repeating the only thing she’d been able to say since they were told. “We haven’t even named him yet.”  
  


* * *

  
Everybody told them, “It doesn’t matter if it’s a girl or a boy, as long as it’s healthy.”  
  
But nothing had prepared them for the news that they were having a son.   
  
Alex could only relate it to the same joyous freefall of Maggie telling her they were finally pregnant, reeling from nerves, euphoria, disbelief. She’d felt the world in that minute.   
  
Maggie immediately switched to calling him _mijo_ , Alex kissing her wife’s belly at night and whispering how she couldn’t wait to meet him. They couldn’t stop imagining him.   
  
Any concerns that arose mostly came from other people - the sceptical glances and unsure comments when people first heard, the way they’d look at Alex like she had nothing to teach him.   
  
They were sipping M’gann’s virgin peach mojitos one night at the bar when Maggie had to tug her out of an argument with a hand around her elbow.  “Alex, forget about that guy. You don’t have to listen to some idiot who doesn’t think you can kick a ball. Hell, between the two of us, our kid’s gonna be the most badass, grenade-obsessed, surfing, soccer-playing, crime-fighting science genius in the world. Or he won’t. Maybe he won’t be like us at all and he’ll be a funky arts student or something. It doesn’t matter. Whatever he is, he’ll be beautiful. He’ll be ours. OK?”  
  
Alex let her wife tuck some hair behind her ear, finding it impossible not to smile at the possibilities, vast as the sea. “OK,” she murmured, kissing her. “But no grenades until he’s at least five.”  
  
Maggie’s head tilted with the laugh, and she wrapped her arms around Alex’s neck. “You’re right, we don’t want him choking on the small parts.”  
  
Their own fears came later - faster for Maggie than for Alex. She remembered her brother’s bloodied face against the hood of a cop car at 17, his screams sounding hollow in that empty Nebraska field. She could picture her son at 7 or 8, too scared to wear hoodies outside the house, too scared to run in the mall, hiding under his bed when he heard sirens blocks away. Imagined herself passing on the safety speech her parents had given her and Eduardo, about where to put your hands, what to say, how to make it home alive.   
  
Throughout her pregnancy, she and Alex kept attending every Black Lives Matter march they could make it to, Maggie clenching her wife’s hand for the parts when she couldn’t chant, when she couldn’t speak, when she could barely breathe. Alex would stop in the street and kiss her soundly, cradling her wife’s growing belly in her hands, and say, “Listen, beautiful boy. Listen to all these people fighting for you.”  
  
After they got home from a march, around five months in, they were making a truckload of brigadeiros and Pão de Queijo (which Maggie would inevitably eat, disgustingly, in the same mouthful) when she stopped, took a deep breath. “Since he’s getting your last name, I think… I want to give him a name that reminds him of his heritage. Eddy and I – we were always so embarrassed of ours, and I just… I want him to be proud of his name, his skin, his language. Not how I grew up, you know?”  
  
“Of course.” Alex came behind her to kiss her shoulder, wrap her arms around her belly. “We could name him after your Tia maybe? A boy version?”  
  
“Actually, I was going to ask her for suggestions. Maybe she can help us name him? It could be a really nice gesture…”  
  
Alex smiled against her wife’s skin. “That sounds perfect.”   
  
The initial phone call, in the end, didn’t go as well as expected. Alex tried her best to stay in the shower and give Maggie some privacy, but it was impossible not to hear snaps of English between the Portuguese and Spanish, the yelling of _no, absolutely not, you’re not telling them anything about this, they gave up the right to know anything about my life twenty years ago, they don’t get to hear his name, they don’t get to know he exists, you’ll always be his Vovó and that’s all that matters…_

Afterwards, Alex found her wife sobbing on the kitchen floor, all hormones and bad memories, and scooped her into her arms. “Darling….”  
  
“I don’t get it, Alex,” she cried. “I haven’t even met him, but I feel so much. I love him, so much. Just… _how_? How could my mom have felt these things for me and still let my dad…?”  
  
All Alex could do was sigh, trying to quell her own fears of turning into her mother, and press kisses into her shaking wife’s hair. “I don’t know, beautiful. I don’t know.”   
  


* * *

  
Everybody told them, “It doesn’t matter if it’s a girl or boy, as long as it’s healthy.”  
  
But they’d never truly considered the prospect that he wouldn’t be healthy.   
  
The doctors discovered it late. Alex and Maggie could sense the edge in their voices as they invited them in for more tests, telling them not to worry until there was cause to be worried. But when Alex heard the words “aortic valve stenosis”, she’d been the one to implode first, leaving to throw up before the doctors could explain to Maggie what the words meant.   
  
Back home, if Alex was a whimper, Maggie was a howl.   
  
Every day that week, she covered her mouth and screamed in the shower. Alex always heard, held her as she broke, let herself break with her, but nothing she said could convince Maggie that she had done all the right things, eaten all the right foods, that there was nothing they could have done.  
  
Their mornings had lost all light. Maggie would find herself holding her breath, unable to get out of bed until she felt him move. “Come on, _mijo_ , wake up for me? Please? Just let me know you’re OK.” Often, Alex’s singing was the only thing that roused him, and she’d kiss Maggie’s belly after, assure him that he was doing a good job, that he was being so brave, that she loved him.   
  
Their friends did everything they could. Winn and James brought food, helped Alex with her paperwork so she could clock off early most days. Kara always commented on his heartbeat changing at the sound of someone’s voice, J’onn confirming that he could tell they were there.  
  
Alex pulled him aside, tears in her eyes. “Tell me the truth. Is he in pain?”  
  
J’onn could only sigh, bringing the closest person he had to a living daughter into his arms. “No, Alex. He’s just very tired. Keep singing to him. He likes it.”  
  
She did. For weeks, it was the only sound in their home that was beautiful.   
  
“You know what my mom would say if she were here?” Maggie muttered as she sat at the kitchen table one night, unable to stomach even her most desperate cravings. There was a bottle of wine in the pantry they’d bought when they first fell pregnant, saving it for the night they brought him home. They both seemed to feel its presence, just feet away – torn between wanting to swallow it down or smash it to pieces.    
  
“What?”   
  
“That this is my punishment. For the life I chose.”  
  
Alex shook her head a little, staring only at the table. Deep down, she knew if anyone was being punished, it was her. She had too much blood on her hands after all these years for it to be anything else.   
  
“Do you believe that?”  
  
Maggie’s lip trembled. “I don’t know.”  
  
It occurred to Alex then, almost out of nowhere, that they’d already painted his room, the back wall all spaceships and stars. She hoped it hadn’t been a mistake.   
  


* * *

  
The doctors took no chances. Scans twice a week, bed rest for Maggie. Alex couldn’t always be there. She worked as much as she could, trying to save money for all the time she’d need off, and she was in uniform, overseeing evidence collection fresh after a raid, when she got the call.   
  
“Alex, you need to come here.”  
  
“Sure, I can drive over -”  
  
“No, Alex, you need to get here now. They’re taking him out.”  
  
Kara flew her straight away, Alex sprinting straight into the hospital leaving no explanation for why Supergirl had just dropped her at the front door. Maggie was in pieces, refusing to settle enough for the c-section, because _what if he dies, Alex, what if he’s not ready, what if he dies and he never knows that we loved him_ …  
  
Alex grasped her hand as they prepped her stomach, drew a curtain across her lower half, got Alex a chair. This was happening. Dear God, it was happening.  
  
“We’re not gonna talk like this,” Alex told her firmly, tears spilling out of her eyes. “Not today. You remember when I was drowning? I was drowning, and you told me I didn’t get to act like it was the end. Because we were gonna have a lifetime of firsts together. You remember?”  
  
Maggie could only sob in response, the doctor announcing that they were going to start cutting. “No, please, not yet -”  
  
“Maggie, babe, don’t look at her. Look at me,” Alex told her, clinging to her wife’s hand as tight as she could. “Listen to me, OK? You told me we were going to have a lifetime of firsts. And we did, beautiful. Our first Valentine’s Day, first Chanukkah, first Christmas. Our first anniversary, at the beach house, remember? We had our first vacation, and I met your Tia for the first time, on the first trips to  home towns. And today we’re having our first baby. Our beautiful boy.”  
  
“Alex,” she choked, wincing at the dulled sensations of being stretched apart, but Alex soothed her, brushed a hand over her covered hair.   
  
“Just breathe, beautiful. We’re meeting our son today. We’re meeting him so soon, darling. And he’s gonna have a lifetime of firsts too. A year from today we’ll be having his first birthday. He’s gonna walk, and ride bikes, and go to school, and bring someone home to meet us, and he’s gonna be so happy, Maggie. I promise, darling, we’ll make sure he’s so happy…”  
  
“I’m scared,” Maggie whispered, hiccupping on her tears as she felt reaching, pulling.  
  
“I’m scared too,” Alex breathed, wiping her eyes. “But we just started this. And it’s not gonna end today. OK?”  
  
“OK," she wept, and she closed her eyes, letting Alex’s forehead rest against hers. But they couldn’t help but notice that when their son was taken to a table by the wall, they were the only ones in the room who were crying.  
  


* * *

 

Two weeks from her son’s first breath, eleven days from his first open heart surgery, Alex found herself running.   
  
Running because the doctors had just told them of his first infection. Possibly his last infection. Updated his condition from stable to serious. Not yet critical. But maybe soon.   
  
Because of course the universe wanted to smack her down from being happy. Of course she didn’t deserve him. Of course motherhood was just another thing for her to fail at.   
  
She couldn’t run home. The place was too full of gifts people brought before it all went to hell, the useless baby clothes that were all too big for him, that he might never grow into. The fridge full of cooked dinners people had dropped by, the letterbox full of sympathy cards, the answering machine flashing red.   
  
God knows what they were going to do with it all, when this was over.   
  
She ran to the only place she knew held people she could trust. James was the first to see her at the door, half-dressed in his Guardian suit, mask off. He pulled her into a hug. “Alex, how are you doing? How’s our little guy?”  
  
“The same,” she lied. “I need to speak to J’onn.”  
  
But J’onn already knew. He called her up to his office, having heard her screaming mind from down the block.   
  
It wasn’t until he shut the door that her knees buckled as she sat, as her vision went dizzy. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, taking in everything she was thinking. “Breathe, Alex.”   
  
She couldn’t cry. Not even with a storm raging in her chest, not even with her world collapsing.   
  
It wasn’t real. She wouldn’t let it be real.   
  
After a while, J’onn said, “Maggie called, hoping to find you here. She needs you, Alex.”  
  
But Alex shook her head hard, letting it fall forward into her hands. “I can’t. I can’t be there if he…”  
  
“Alex,” he exhaled, his own mind screaming along with hers now. “As someone who’s lost children…”  
  
A sob escaped Alex’s chest and splattered against the window.   
  
“It was the most painful thing to hear my daughters scream as they were dragged to the furnace. But it’s my greatest regret that I wasn’t there at the end. Even if it meant burning with them.” He closed his eyes, body shaking from the shuddering woman under his arm, from the wound of his own memory. “He can’t do this without you. Maggie can’t do this without you. If it happens, it will hurt like nothing you’ve ever felt before. But if it happens and you’re not there…”  
  
Alex choked, wiped her face. “I should be stronger than this. Maggie should be falling apart, but I… He’s not even mine, not really…”  
  
“No, Alex. He’s yours. Before he even existed, when he was just an idea, he was yours.”  
  
“J’onn’s right, Alex,” Kara said, slipping through the door and kneeling before her grieving sister. “You and Maggie dreamt him up together, made him together, brought him into the world together. And you’re going to get through this next part together.”  
  
“I’m scared,” Alex choked.  
  
“I know,” Kara wept, holding her hands. “Maggie called me, she told me he was worse. She needs you there, Alex. Luca needs you there. And I know you need them too. So I’m gonna fly you over, OK? He needs his mom for this.”  
  
Once Alex caught her breath, she agreed to go, but only if Kara flew her to the desert first. Out there in the dust, she let herself collapse to the ground, let her sister hold her, let herself scream like she could burn the world down.   
  


* * *

  
Maggie left the NICU as soon as she saw them coming. She’d never wanted to fight in front of him.   
  
It made Alex long for the start of their relationship. It was a simpler time then, when they could argue about vacations and dishwashers. Not where they would bury their son next week, if they had to. Not picking out coffins the size of fucking shoeboxes.   
  
“Nice of you to show up, Alex.”  
  
She felt all the bite in the words. Absorbed it. “I’m sorry I left. I had to speak to J’onn.”  
  
Maggie trembled noticeably at the mention, knowing exactly what they would have discussed. She shook her head to clear it, twisted her wedding ring around, around. “He’s been OK today. They say if he starts breathing on his own again within the next 24 hours that’s good progress.”  
  
Alex didn’t ask what would happen if he didn’t.    
  
On the other side of the glass, they could hear Kara speaking softly to Luca. _When you get bigger we’re gonna have the best time together. I’ll take you flying wherever you want, little one. I promise._  
  
Alex sighed, stepped a little closer to her wife. “I’m sorry I ran. I was just losing it, I needed -”  
  
“I know. I get that. But you didn’t even tell me where you were going. I was scared,” Maggie told her, dissolving in Alex’s grasp. “I know since we found out he was sick you’ve been distancing yourself. You barely felt him kick, you threw yourself into your work. But I couldn’t run. I _felt_ him, every second of every day. Now, not being able to hold him… I feel like someone’s cut off my hand, Alex. I can’t do this without my wife.”  
  
“You don’t have to,” Alex whimpered, pulling her into her arms. “I just needed to go and breathe. But I’m here. I’ll always be here. For all of it. All our firsts.”  
  
Maggie sniffled, wiped her eyes. “I just hope they’re good ones.”  
  
They scrubbed in, suited up, covered their hair, saying goodbye to Kara as she left to give them space. But Alex still had to fight not to break apart seeing him there, his chest bruised, carved straight down the middle. Wires. Tubes.   
  
Her son.   
  
“He’s OK,” Maggie murmured, her hand rubbing Alex’s back and guiding her closer. “Come sit down.”  
  
The first thing Alex did was reach out her hand to take his. Even barely conscious, he knew she was there, his body seeming to release a wave of tension. “I missed you so much, beautiful boy,” Alex wept. “I’m so sorry. I’m back now, I promise. I’m right here.”  
  
He shifted in his daze, as if trying to edge closer to her hand, and she held on. Maggie leaned her head against her wife’s shoulder, wiping her eyes. “Looks like he missed you too.”  
  


* * *

  
  
There was a sign on his capsule. It had hippos on it.   
  
“Hi, my name is: _Luca Jon Danvers_  
  
My parents are: _Magdalena Sawyer and Alexandra Danvers_  
  
I like: _sleeping with my moms’ t-shirts and soft music_    
  
I don’t like: _loud talking_  
  
I’m resting after major surgery. Please visit the washing station and cover your clothes in a sanitised gown before you hold my hand. _Do not_ try to pick me up. Tell a nurse _immediately_ if I turn blue.”  
  
They sat in silence for a long while, Alex reading the sign a thousand times over, still not able to absorb that this boy carried her family’s name. Beside her, her wife was praying for the first time in twenty years. _Hail Mary, full of grace_ , she remembered, but after that, her mind was entirely dark.  
  
“He looks so much like you,” Alex whispered. And he did – the skin darker than hers, almost black hair on his head. Even his eyelashes, his lips. His eyes, on the few occasions she’d seen them. “He’s so beautiful.”  
  
“He is. Can you believe we did this? That we made him?”  
  
Alex shook her head “It was all you anyway.”  
  
“No. It was us. It’s always been us.”  
  
“I just…I feel like after all the things I’ve done, the people I’ve killed… Maybe that’s why. Maybe I don’t deserve him, Maggie -”  
  
“No,” Maggie insisted, grasping her hand hard. “We do deserve him. We deserve a real, full, happy life, remember?”  
  
Squeezing back, Alex kissed her wife’s forehead. “I want you to know,” she started, but her voice cracked. She swallowed. “I want you to know that I love you. And I’m proud of us for doing this. Whatever happens.”  
  
“I love you too, Alex,” Maggie replied, kissing her softly. “And when we get through this, we’re going to have the most beautiful lifetime of firsts, with this perfect little boy that we made. OK?”  
  
Alex nodded against her forehead, fighting not to sob.   
  
They sat for a few more hours. They took turns eating. Alex sang his favourite, the red robin song, over and over.   
  
It was about 9pm, when he started choking.   
  
The world spun. Doctors and nurses crowded him, Alex clinging to her wife, telling her that this was good, this was what they needed, that he was fighting his tubes. “Breathe, baby boy,” she found herself saying anyway. “ _Breathe_. _Please_.”  
  
When his lungs filled with air, their world filled back up with light. And as he screamed and screamed, his skin the healthiest red they’d ever seen it, legs kicking at anything he could reach, Maggie and Alex clung to each other, relishing in the sound that meant their son was here, was breathing, was alive.  
  
When the doctors finally confirmed that he was stable, removing many of his tubes and wires, they asked who wanted to be the first to hold him.  
  
“You should, Alex,” Maggie murmured. “I got to have him for 8 months, it’s your turn.”  
  
“No,” Alex replied, running a hand down Maggie’s back. “Together. Always.”  
  
The nurses wrapped him up for them, getting them to share a massive armchair as they laid him across their laps. In tears, in disbelief, they stared down at their sleeping beautiful boy, both their hands cradling his head, his body.  
  
“God, he’s so small,” Maggie whispered, laying a thumb across one of his tiny feet to compare.  
  
Alex smirked through tears, raised an eyebrow at her wife. “Wonder why.”  
  
Maggie’s hand left Luca just a moment to lightly smack her, and for the first time in weeks, they laughed. Together they held their son, and stroked his hair, and kissed his hands, and knew their lifetime of firsts wasn't over yet.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, you can find me on tumblr @jiemba


End file.
